Page:Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind - Benjamin Rush.djvu/29

 It is possible it may arise in recent cases of madness which terminate fatally, from the same retrospection of the blood from the brain, which takes place from the face and external surface of the body just before death. But,

2. We much oftener discover in the brain, after death from madness, inflammation, effusions of water in its ventricles, extravasation and intravation of blood, and even pus. After chronic madness, we discover some peculiar appearances which have never been met with in any other disease of the brain, and these are a preternatural hardness, and dryness in all its parts. Lieutaud mentions it often with the epithets of "durum," "praedurum," "siccum," and "exsuccum." Morgagni takes notice of this hardness likewise, and says he had observed it in the cerebrum in persons in whom the cerebellum retained its natural softness. Dr. Baillie and Mr. John Hunter have remarked, that the brain in this state discovered marks of elasticity when pressed by the fingers. Mr. Mickell says a cube of six lines of the brain of a maniac, thus indurated, weighed seven drachms, whereas a cube of the same dimension of a sound brain weighed but one drachm, and between four and six grains. I have ascribed this hardness, dryness, elasticity and relative weight of